sunset from behind the wire

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Does a Corporation have a Right to Freedom of Religion?

The question of what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution is apparently irrelevant to the Obama Administration. And before you attack me for jumping to conclusions, we've had four years of precedent in this matter as time-after-time, the ObamaNation has sought to distance "our modern world" from the law of the land.

In Sherbert v. Verner, the Supreme Court required states to meet the "strict scrutiny" standard when refusing to accommodate religiously motivated conduct. This meant that a government needed to have a "compelling interest" regarding such a refusal. The case involved Adele Sherbert, who was denied unemployment benefits by South Carolina because she refused to work on Saturdays, something forbidden by her Seventh-day Adventist faith. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court ruled that a law that "unduly burdens the practice of religion" without a compelling interest, even though it might be "neutral on its face," would be unconstitutional.

All of that may be going away because of key provisions of the ObamaCare tax. (The Supreme Court held that ObamaCare is constitutional because it is a tax)

Hobby Lobby Stores has appealed a federal judge’s decision denying the craft supply chain’s request to not provide employees with insurance that covers morning-after and week-after birth control pills, as mandated by the ObamaCare law.

The Christian-owned company asked for relief in the face of fines they say could reach $1 million a day for not providing the coverage.

The appeal was filed Tuesday in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal judge in Oklahoma on Monday denied the owners’ request for a temporary injunction against the provisions of the Obama administration's health law.

The chain's appeal states in part that Chief Executive Officer David Green his family in less than six weeks “must either violate their faith by covering abortion-causing drugs or be exposed to severe penalties -- including fines of up to $1.3 million per day, annual penalties of about $26 million and exposure to private suits.” (Fox News)

Note that there is nothing that prohibits Hobby Lobby Stores employees from obtaining RU482 or any other aborting drug on their own. Hobby Lobby Stores simply don't feel that it's a moral thing to do and they have a well-founded religious objection to THEIR participation in the abortion.

It may come down to a choice where Hobby Lobby (which employs tens of thousands of people) either accepts this defining gem of the Obama presidency or they close their doors and lay off their workers. When you consider how many unemployed Americans there are today, 20,000 more or less added to unemployment roles won't move the needle on the meter.

Interesting that you hit on the Jamestown link too... We were talking about this last night at dinner, and how many parallels there are... Well said, and it WILL be interesting to see which way Hobby Lobby goes...

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